And just like that, the EU finds that the rest of the world isn't willing to play ball and will subsequently block them from accessing their sites. The US is bad enough with their copyright laws, but they're not that bad.

It's not the most important detail by any stretch of the imagination, but this

Quote:

but fans have traditionally been free to take pictures or personal videos and share them online. The new legislation could give sports teams ownership of all images and video from their games, regardless of who took them and how they are shared.

is monstrous.

Attempting to impose a legal framework upon what you see and feel with your own eyes. It is hard to believe it is even real.

Copyright enforcement has become more and more draconian in my lifetime. Copyright was supposed to be good for everyone - temporary protection for artists, more content for society, with the promise of RELEASE INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

I'm starting to think that the copyright system itself is essentially untenable. Copyright holders will always push to have unlimited, ironclad copyrights, and John Q. Public will never have the lawyers to fight them.

In this respect, is the gain in content worth the cost to society as a whole? In other words, does the original "deal" of copyrights still even stand?

What's interesting is that content being listed on Google, for instance, is a win-win. Well-managed platforms have an SEO strategy in order to help disseminate content through search providers. Without this linking, how could many Web presences even survive? Even with not-for-profit presences, getting out the message through search engines is a vital part of their strategy.

Now, what if the script is flipped, and search engines begin treating listings more like the traditional classified section of print publications?

While I don't support this law, I can see the logic behind some parts. At the moment, if you have a newspaper, you cannot print some hate speach and copyrighted material and say "this is the content published by our readers, we are not responsible for it". Somehow, websites expect to be free of any liability for the same situation.

Who are the shadow actors behind this bill? I can't imagine this just spontaneously entered the minds of the parliamentarians, and web publishers don't seem to have enough organization.

A fair bit of support comes from traditional publishers with strong web presence, such as Axel Springer SE (Bild, Die Welt, and Fakt), Agence France-Presse, Press Association (a UK trade group that includes the Daily Mail, Guardian, Telegraph, and Trinity Mirror), and EANA.

I think I have an idea. Once you have your website built, but before you open it to the public, you simply have to write a letter to the collection societies (BMG, ASCAP, etc. see here for a bigger list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _societies ) and tell them that you've built a copyright filter and that in order to prevent the upload of their copyrighted works, they'll need to send you, at no charge, a digital copy of every work that they expect your filter to block. Tell them that if they don't expect you to block a particular work, they should withhold it from you.

Sign them.

Date them.

Send them via registered mail.

If they don't send you a couple of trucks full of dvds, you're free to allow your users to upload anything that they've refused to provide you with.

Who are the shadow actors behind this bill? I can't imagine this just spontaneously entered the minds of the parliamentarians, and web publishers don't seem to have enough organization.

A fair bit of support comes from traditional publishers with strong web presence, such as Axel Springer SE (Bild, Die Welt, and Fakt), Agence France-Presse, Press Association (a UK trade group that includes the Daily Mail, Guardian, Telegraph, and Trinity Mirror), and EANA.

So, the old gaurd of EU media. And by extension a large swath of the AP.

Copyright enforcement has become more and more draconian in my lifetime. Copyright was supposed to be good for everyone - temporary protection for artists, more content for society, with the promise of RELEASE INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

I'm starting to think that the copyright system itself is essentially untenable. Copyright holders will always push to have unlimited, ironclad copyrights, and John Q. Public will never have the lawyers to fight them.

In this respect, is the gain in content worth the cost to society as a whole? In other words, does the original "deal" of copyrights still even stand?

I think all the big tech firms’ (google, Facebook, Twitter, etc., etc.) lawyers are pretty well aligned with the interests of John Q. Public on copyright issues. The problem in this instance is that none of those big the firms are European.

Here in France news publishers have a long habit of being subsidised by the State. Some years they received more than 1 Billion € in subsidies from the french State (source: fr.wikipedia.org). When you are used to live on welfare money, you become extremely complacent, and an easy prey to disruption when new players enter the market. Hell, why try to compete when you can just suck up other companies' money?

French newspapers are not charities. The biggest ones are owned by Dassault, Xavier Niel, Altice, and Bouyges. All billionaires or very large corporations. They don't give a fck about the freedom of press. Just like every othe copyright law, actual content creators (the journalists) are going to get nothing from this link tax. The money is going to go directly in the pockets of these groups.

It's also entirely possible that they just shot themselves in the foot, and opened the door to new, modern actors who will know how to play the long game with Google and Facebook.

And just like that, the EU finds that the rest of the world isn't willing to play ball and will subsequently block them from accessing their sites. The US is bad enough with their copyright laws, but they're not that bad.

Pre-brexit, the EU is actually a larger economic entity than the US. Size matters. Of course, rising powers in Asia, like China, India, and others will create their own schemes.

I think I have an idea. Once you have your website built, but before you open it to the public, you simply have to write a letter to the collection societies (BMG, ASCAP, etc. see here for a bigger list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _societies ) and tell them that you've built a copyright filter and that in order to prevent the upload of their copyrighted works, they'll need to send you, at no charge, a digital copy of every work that they expect your filter to block. Tell them that if they don't expect you to block a particular work, they should withhold it from you.

Sign them.

Date them.

Send them via registered mail.

If they don't send you a couple of trucks full of dvds, you're free to allow your users to upload anything that they've refused to provide you with.

Who are the shadow actors behind this bill? I can't imagine this just spontaneously entered the minds of the parliamentarians, and web publishers don't seem to have enough organization.

They're called Rights's Societies. Like BMG, ASCAP (see the link in my post above to the wikipedia article listing them). And publishing trade associations. And never forget the RIAA and MPAA (even though we wish we could.)

Copyright enforcement has become more and more draconian in my lifetime. Copyright was supposed to be good for everyone - temporary protection for artists, more content for society, with the promise of RELEASE INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

I'm starting to think that the copyright system itself is essentially untenable. Copyright holders will always push to have unlimited, ironclad copyrights, and John Q. Public will never have the lawyers to fight them.

In this respect, is the gain in content worth the cost to society as a whole? In other words, does the original "deal" of copyrights still even stand?

I totally agree with the spirit of copyright but holy fuck, does it suck now. I agree that making something takes time and that thing should be protected for a limited amount of time to compensate for the time it took to make.

But shit like this and things like copyright lasting for 70 years and basically giving their children/family members a free ride just because they made a catchy tune one time when they were 20 really make me hate it.

"Online content sharing service providers perform an act of communication to the public and therefore are responsible for their content and should therefore conclude fair and appropriate licensing agreements with rightholders," the new legislation says.

Chain enough wishy-washy "therefores" together and you can justify just about anything!

I’d be interested in reading a bit more about whether this initiative will actually effect small internet companies. Copyright is still a territorial right, so if smal-YouTube-competitor doesn’t implement European style content filtering, they might be in violation of Belgian law - but if they don’t have any assets in Belgium, who cares? Similar story with link tax. Good luck getting an Austrian Court to collect a judgment against a California company.

True, this will disincentivize small internet companies from opening up offices in Portugal as they grow - but, well, that’s Portugal’s problem. Isn’t it largely the internet behemoths who already have offices in Ireland that need to worry about this?

This is really bad, the EU is going to have a reverse Great Firewall of China where instead of the government doing the censoring, it's going to be content providers outside the European Union who will block access to their sites.

The sad thing to me is that even after all these years, laws continue to be proposed that show utter ignorance of the underlying technologies. Links, accompanied by “individual words”? You mean a non-image link with a text title matching the linked page title?

I’d be interested in reading a bit more about whether this initiative will actually effect small internet companies. Copyright is still a territorial right, so if smal-YouTube-competitor doesn’t implement European style content filtering, they might be in violation of Belgian law - but if they don’t have any assets in Belgium, who cares? Similar story with link tax. Good luck getting an Austrian Court to collect a judgment against a California company.

True, this will disincentivize small internet companies from opening up offices in Portugal as they grow - but, well, that’s Portugal’s problem. Isn’t it largely the internet behemoths who already have offices in Ireland that need to worry about this?

I don't have a lot of experience with the platform liability discussion, so I'm sort of asking a question vs. making an assertion, but it strikes me as normal that digital "land owners" would be held to similar standards as physical land owners.

Isn't arguing otherwise basically arguing that "but on a computer" is somehow a meaningful distinction?

While I don't support this law, I can see the logic behind some parts. At the moment, if you have a newspaper, you cannot print some hate speach and copyrighted material and say "this is the content published by our readers, we are not responsible for it". Somehow, websites expect to be free of any liability for the same situation.

Classifieds have always been this way before the internet existed? There was life before the internet tubes....

While I don't support this law, I can see the logic behind some parts. At the moment, if you have a newspaper, you cannot print some hate speach and copyrighted material and say "this is the content published by our readers, we are not responsible for it". Somehow, websites expect to be free of any liability for the same situation.

Do newspapers publish letters to the editor "as is" or do they still exercise editorial authority prior to publication? I suppose if a website made the same demands of approval prior to publication of comments or content, it would need to be held to the same standards, though.

The most I've ever seen of websites, though, is some editorial control for the first couple of comments (ostensibly to check for spam or trolls, I suppose), but then full posting freedom with moderation after the fact.

Copyright enforcement has become more and more draconian in my lifetime. Copyright was supposed to be good for everyone - temporary protection for artists, more content for society, with the promise of RELEASE INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

I'm starting to think that the copyright system itself is essentially untenable. Copyright holders will always push to have unlimited, ironclad copyrights, and John Q. Public will never have the lawyers to fight them.

In this respect, is the gain in content worth the cost to society as a whole? In other words, does the original "deal" of copyrights still even stand?

No.

Thats why everyone should do what my username says till there is a tipping point and we get the fat cat greedy bastards at the table.

The new legislation could give sports teams ownership of all images and video from their games, regardless of who took them and how they are shared.

Excuse me?

I see the EU is trying to prove that the US doesn't have a monopoly on stupid when it comes to laws regarding anything digital.

And I've got 10 Euro cents that says the majority of people pushing for this don't really understand how the Internet works.

Good guess. The laws mandating x% of content on Netflix and Amazon be from the EU (and "prominently positioned") shows that the EU bureaucrats have never actually used Netflix and Amazon and don't understand how they work.